May 2016

This January, we teamed up with Dick's Sporting Goods to launch Gear in Action, a digital lookbook featuring products for the 2014 Baseball season. As you can see on this page of the finished site, video of the products in action displays at full height and width. This occurs regardless of browser size, and without distorting the video's original aspect ratio.

My article on using CSS to position HTML5 videos as fullscreen web page backgrounds has proven to be one of the most popular on this site, but the technique has a significant challenge in that it forces users to host their own videos, or to find a service to do so.

WebVTT is associated with subtitling HTML5 video, but the spec contains many additional features that aren’t related to dialogue. One of the most useful of these is the ability to read and link to video cue points. Creating WebVTT chapter tracks deepens viewer’s engagement with more informative content, while adding invaluable accessibility and UI features. Best of all, they’re easy to create.

Photography has had a relatively quiet but constant presence in video games over the last two decades, usually featured in video game titles as a mini-game or bonus mode. A few incorporate photography into the main storyline.